I like the pace of technology, especially in finance where it can move so fast. In 2015 I was named one of the 25 top global finserv influencers. (http://bit.ly/1DsqaeK) In addition to Forbes I write for International Finance Magazine, Banking Technology and Mondo Visione, all based in London.

WalmartLabs Can Figure Out Gifts Your Facebook Friends Want

Stuck trying to find a gift for your mother-in-law, or that 16-year old niece? Put @WalmartLabs’ Social Genome to work.

Go to facebook.com/shopycat and download a small application to your computer. It will review your Facebook friends and look at their hobbies, interests and activities and create a list of gift suggestion. You can search for recommendations by name or by interest, review the suggestion and click to buy a gift. (Two drawbacks for the Facebook skeptics — it also puts your name, hobbies and gift wishes out there for friends to see, and you get enrolled in Facebook’s Timeline.)

On his blog, Anand Rajaraman, senior vice president at Walmart Global eCommerce, explains:

“For example, Shopycat notices that my friend Joe keeps posting about the Red Sox, and infers that he is a Red Sox– and therefore, a baseball — fan. Shopycat analyzes likes and shares to infer tastes as varied as Harry Potter, running, Angry Birds, sushi, yoga, and parenting to recommend gifts.

“The second step is to search across a large universe of products to find the one “wow” gift that doesn’t break the bank. Shopycat matches users’ interests to a giant catalog that includes products from Walmart.com, Walmart and sites including Barnes and Noble, RedEnvelope, ThinkGeek, and Hot Topic.” Rajaraman said Walmart understood it didn’t necessarily have the best selection of potential gifts, so it partnered with other retailers.

Before tools like Hadoop were available to work with big data, using information from social media would have been difficult, if not impossible. Now Facebook, Twitter and other sites including Flickr, have changed the sources of information available to retailers. No longer is a retailer limited to monitoring the actions of shoppers on its site or in its stores. Walmart can watch social media for trends, such as the rise in popularity of the English singer Susan Boyle as it was happening, so buyers can make sure they have the right music in stock for those who still buy CDs.

Rajaraman, a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist investor in Silicon Valley, has developed technology to understand the sentiment in social media postings at Kosmix, a company he co-founded with Venky Harinarayan. It developed a platform called the Social Genome to organize and understand the deluge of data in status updates, tweets, blogs and videos. Walmart bought the company nine months ago and its 60 employees made the move to WalmartLabs where it is part of Walmart’s e-commerce operations. Rajaraman, who sold his comparison shopping company Junglee to Amazon in 1996 for $250 million, now talks of using the social media technology developed at Kosmix to help Walmart leapfrog Amazon.

In another example from Rajaraman’s blog: “…when I tweet “Loved Angelina Jolie in Salt,” the tweet connects me (a user) to Angelia Jolie (an actress) and SALT (a movie). By analyzing the huge volume of data produced every day on social media, the Social Genome builds rich profiles of users, topics, products, places, and events.”

So if his friend remarks on Facebook that she loves Salt, Shopycat will understand this is a prompt to suggest a DVD, rather than a a salt grinder, for a birthday present. All this data stored at Walmart sounds ominous, but the company is not building massive profiles on individual users from Shopycat or planning to target them with annoying offers.

“We don’t use it for any other marketing purposes,” Rajaraman said.

Emmett Cox, a former retail analysts for Walmart who is now at BBVA Compass Bank, said that Walmart does not store personal information like some other stores do. Target, for example, was the subject of a fascinating New York Times piece on its ability to tell when women were pregnant and begin targeting them with infant-related marketing materials.

Walmart is using only information that is publicly available on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

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Is any one else a little freaked out by this? Now we within the societies infected by facebook we don’t even need to know our own family or friends. Pretty soon they will have apps detailing suggestions on how to speak with other humans. This is a seriously catastrophic drawback in social evolution. Now take a guess as to whether or not I’m being spied on every second of every day, your right!!! I don’t have a facebook page.

Yes, good points. One thing I like about this is that it is completely voluntary and based on publicly posted information. So I was ready to sign up and get some gift ideas for nieces and nephews, but then I realized that they, and anybody else I know on Facebook, could track me. Never mind. A second point. I am in Madison for the FUSION 2012 CEO-CIO Symposium which is just as techhie as it sounds. And what do people value? Yes, the content, but at least as much they like the opportunity to meet others face to face and network. So perhaps all is not lost on the human scale.